Fox & Friends' coverage of the refugee crisis focused on whether the migrants might be terrorists because they're predominantly Muslim and may have chanted "Allahu Akbar."

Thousands of men, women, and children are increasingly fleeing Iraq to escape violence from the Islamic State, joining more than four million migrants who have left Syria since the start of its civil war. The ensuing global humanitarian crisis is now being called the worst migration crisis since World War II, according to the United Nations. Yet on Fox News, the refugee crisis has been used to push fears about the religion of the refugees.

Fox & Friends hyped a "disturbing" video on September 9 purporting to show refugees chanting "Allahu Akbar" as evidence that most of the refugees are Muslim. Despite adding the caveat that "we're not saying that any of [the refugees] are terrorists," Fox hosts suggested "Allahu Akbar" chants show why "some are worried" the refugees are "potential terrorists," while an on-screen graphic blared, "Terrorists Inbound? Taking Refugees Could Open Door To Jihadists."

KRISTIN FISHER: At the same time that the White House is reconsidering what to do about this refugee crisis, a new video surfaces online showing why some are worried Europe is opening its doors to potential terrorists.

[...]

Those are reportedly Muslim refugees on a train in Europe chanting "Allahu Akbar" or "God is great." Now, to be clear, we're not saying that any of those people are terrorists or in any way affiliated with a terror group, but it does highlight just how many of these refugees, who are fleeing violence in Iraq and Syria, are Muslim. And when they're flooding into Europe at a rate of thousands a day, it's impossible to check all of them as they cross the border. The White House has been taking some heat from its European allies for not doing more to help, but yesterday a spokesman said the administration is "actively considering other options."

It appears the video originated on the fringe website InfoWars.com, which links to a YouTube post calling the men in the video "ISIS recruits," not refugees as Fox & Friends claimed.

Rush Limbaugh joined Fox News hosts in declaring that the Black Lives Matter movement, which aims to shine a spotlight on racial disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system, should be designated a "hate group."

The Washington Post's George Will likened legal abortion to "barbarism" and "a limitless right to kill, and distribute fragments of, babies."

Will cited the debunked notion that Planned Parenthood profits from the sale of fetal tissue -- a smear manufactured from a conservative group's recent series of deceptivelyedited videos -- to accuse the women's health organization of running "federally subsidized meat markets" in a July 31 column. The Fox News contributor claimed that those who support women's ability to make their own reproductive choices see fetuses as lacking "a moral standing superior to a tumor or a hamburger in the mother's stomach." He went on:

The nonnegotiable tenet in today's Democratic Party catechism is not opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline or support for a $15 minimum wage. These are evanescent fevers. As the decades roll by, the single unshakable commitment is opposition to any restriction on the right to inflict violence on pre-born babies. So today there is a limitless right to kill, and distribute fragments of, babies that intrauterine medicine can increasingly treat as patients.

We are wallowing in this moral swamp because the Supreme Court accelerated the desensitization of the nation by using words and categories about abortion the way infants use knives and forks -- with gusto, but sloppily. Because Planned Parenthood's snout is deep in the federal trough, decent taxpayers find themselves complicit in the organization's vileness. What kind of a government disdains the deepest convictions of citizens by forcing them to finance what they see in videos -- Planned Parenthood operatives chattering about bloody human fragments? "Taxes," said Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., "are what we pay for civilized society." Today they finance barbarism.

Despite Will's declaration that taxes "finance barbarism," Planned Parenthood does not use any federal money for abortion procedures -- it's been unlawful for nearly 40 years.

His smears are further undermined by the Post's own editorial board, which called out conservative efforts to attack Planned Parenthood based on the deceptively edited videos:

That truths were distorted to paint an inaccurate and unfair picture of a health organization that provides valuable services to women -- as well as to demonize research that leads to important medical advances -- doesn't matter to antiabortion activists. Or, sadly, to the politicians who pander to them.

Planned Parenthood is under virulent attack for the role a small portion of its affiliates play in helping women who want to donate fetal tissue for medical research. The antiabortion group Center for Medical Progress has orchestrated a propaganda campaign accusing the nation's largest provider of abortions of profiting from the illegal sale of fetal tissue, a charge refuted by Planned Parenthood.

None of the videos released shows anything illegal and, in fact, the full footage of Planned Parenthood executives meeting with people presumed to be buyers for a human biologics company include repeated assertions that clinics are not selling tissue but only seeking permitted reimbursement costs for expenses. Indeed, the Colorado clinic featured in the videos refused to enter into a contract with the phony company because of its failure to meet its legal and ethical standards.

The New York Times' Maureen Dowd's latest tired attack on Hillary Clinton involves a lengthy comparison of the Democratic presidential candidate to disgraced New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.

Dowd spent nearly half of her August 1 column spearing Clinton with dubious pseudo-scandals and comparisons to quarterback Tom Brady, recently suspended from four NFL games for his role in the use of deflated footballs in January's AFC championship game. "It turns out Tom Brady and Hillary Clinton have more in common than you would think," Dowd claimed, calling the two "[a] pair of team captains craving a championship doing something surreptitious that they never needed to do to win." She went on:

Brady had his assistant terminate his Samsung phone the day before he talked to an investigator about Deflategate. Hillary set up a home-brew private server, overruling the concerns of her husband's aides, and erased 30,000 emails before the government had a chance to review them to see if any were classified.

Brady and Hillary, wanting to win at all costs and believing the rules don't apply to them, are willing to take the hit of people not believing them, calculating that there is no absolute proof.

They both have a history of subterfuge -- Brady and the Patriots with Spygate, Hillary with all her disappearing and appearing records.

In stretching to link Clinton to Brady, Dowd echoes right-wing media pundits desperate to spin any news into an attack on the leading Democratic presidential candidate. Such attacks are old territory for Dowd. For more than 20 years, Dowd has been attempting to smear Clinton by any means necessary, even stooping to pushing sexist tropes and taunting nicknames. According to a Media Matters analysis of 195 of Dowd's columns written during her tenure at the Times, more than 70 percent painted Clinton in a negative light.

The New York Times issued a correction to its flawed report on a potential Department of Justice probe into Hillary Clinton's use of personal email while at the State Department.

After publishing a July 23 report that cited anonymous government officials to claim federal investigators were seeking a criminal probe into Clinton's use of personal email, the Times made dramatic alterations to the post, walking back the claim that Clinton was the target of the probe with no acknowledgement of the correction.

The Times initially said they would not issue a correction for the change, claiming there had been no "factual error," but issued a formal correction on the afternoon of July 24 to explain that Clinton was not personally the subject of the referral to investigate:

An earlier version of this article and an earlier headline, using information from senior government officials, misstated the nature of the referral to the Justice Department regarding Hillary Clinton's personal email account while she was secretary of state. The referral addressed the potential compromise of classified information in connection with that personal email account. It did not specifically request an investigation into Mrs. Clinton.

The Times' correction did not note the clarification from a Justice Department official that the referral was not criminal in nature, which further contradicts the Times' account.

As of posting, the Times article still appears to falsely characterize the referral as "criminal."

UPDATE: In a separate article published in the afternoon on July 24, the same NY Times reporters appear to acknowledge that DOJ has not received a "criminal" referral in this matter, writing "On Thursday night and again Friday morning, the Justice Department referred to the matter as a 'criminal referral' but later on Friday dropped the word 'criminal.'"

The State and Intelligence Community inspectors general have also put out a joint statement stating that there had been no criminal referral.

State & intel IGs put out a joint statement saying it was a counterintelligence referral, not criminal. pic.twitter.com/SZe2h7bBUm

As of this posting, the original Times article is still headlined "Criminal Inquiry Is Sought in Clinton Email Account," and continues to claim that the inspectors general"have asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation."

The New York Times dramatically changed a report that initially stated -- based on anonymous sources -- that federal investigators were seeking a criminal probe into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's use of personal email while at the State Department. The Times walked back their statement that the requested probe would target Clinton with no acknowledgement of the correction. This is the latest in a long series of cases of media outlets walking back initial sloppy reports on Clinton's email use.

Men not hitting women may be an "antiquated notion" because of co-ed sports and the gender equality movement, according to Fox News' Keith Ablow.

That was the Fox News contributor and "Medical A-Team" member's takeaway from a newly surfaced surveillance video showing then-Florida State University quarterback De'Andre Johnson punching a female student in the face at a bar.

Discussing the assault and Johnson's subsequent dismissal from the team on the July 8 edition of Fox & Friends, Ablow stressed that while he doesn't personally believe men should hit women, "that may be an antiquated notion if you look at our culture, which has just in a wholesale way dispensed with all gender quote-unquote stereotypes."

Ablow went on to blame co-ed sports and a culture that tries to "dispense with the idea of gender differences" for an environment in which a man would punch a woman. If men are accustomed to competing against women in wrestling matches, Ablow said, then "when you're in a bar and she slaps you, you punch her in the face":

ABLOW: Listen if you're saying that it's just fine to flip a girl onto her back in a wrestling match, and pin her to the ground and take some joy in that -- well then I guess if you're in a bar and she slaps you, you punch her in the face. Not in Ablow's world, because you'd never be wrestling her to begin with.

Breitbart.com inaccurately attributed a fake quote from a facetious tweet to Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes in an attempt to smear the Obama administration for negotiating with Iran.

Rhodes sat down with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg on June 29 at the Aspen Ideas Festival to discuss the U.S.' nuclear talks with Iran. When asked whether President Obama believes negotiations will lead to a change in Iran's behavior, Rhodes responded affirmatively and added, "We believe that an agreement is necessary and has to be good enough to be worth doing even if Iran doesn't change. If 10 or 15 years from now Iran is the same as it is today, in terms of its government, the deal has to be good enough that it can exist on those merits."

Brookings Institute senior fellow Mike Doran ridiculed Rhodes' response in a June 30 tweet, summarizing it as an effort to "turn the Iranian frog into a handsome prince":

Ben Rhodes: "We believe that the kiss of the nuke deal will turn the Iranian frog into a handsome prince" | https://t.co/F7SkdslCJw

In a rush to attack Rhodes and Obama, Breitbart.com reported the mocking tweet as an actual quote from the interview, apparently neglecting to watch the discussion between Rhodes and Goldberg. Breitbart.com editor Joel Pollak claimed in a July 1 post that the phrase came from Rhodes' "own words," accusing him of telling "fairy tales to the American public" (emphasis added):

Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes-who lacks any prior qualifications for the post-has explained to the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg at the Aspen Ideas Festivalon Monday that the administration believes that a bad Iran deal is worth doing because political reform inside the Iranian regime is more likely with the deal than without. Or, to use Rhodes's own words: "We believe that the kiss of the nuke deal will turn the Iranian frog into a handsome prince."

A "fairy tale" analogy is appropriate indeed.

Goldberg called out Breitbart for "totally manufacturing quotes" on Twitter, and later Doran explained how he was merely "ridicul[ing]" Rhodes and it "did not occur to me that anybody would think he actually used those words":

@jvmadden I ridiculed him. It did not occur to me that anybody would think he actually used those words.

Last year, Breitbart.com's Pollak similarly attacked the wrong Loretta Lynch in an attempt to smear the attorney general nominee, misidentifying a California based attorney for the president's pick for AG.

As of this posting, Breitbart.com has yet to correct their inaccurate report.

Several Fox News figures trumpeted news that real estate mogul Donald Trump officially declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination in 2016, lauding him as "a winner" and even comparing him to former President Ronald Reagan.

Right-wing media outlets are parroting the attacks of an anti-LGBTQ hate group on Connecticut’s openly gay comptroller, Kevin Lembo. Lembo recently sent the American Family Association (AFA) a letter asking the group to submit written documentation certifying it complies with the nondiscrimination regulations governing the Connecticut State Employee Campaign for Charitable Giving (CSEC), which allows Connecticut State employees to contribute to qualifying non-profit charities through payroll deductions. Lembo’s office has since been “flooded” with emails and phone calls from AFA supporters.